Sunday, March 6, 2011

PC presents - a mixtape made of my 010100010s

Hello all,

A few weeks ago in the midst of a paper I was writing on Abu Musab Al Zarqawi, I began obsessively compiling a mixtape; maybe doing so was a way of dealing with a lot of the feelings that writing about Zarqawi provoked.

This one had to fulfill all the cassette-era criteria: be about 90 minutes long, and 'work' as a sequence of songs and tracks, without the ability to beatmatch, cut or fade. Here it is: all tracks played in full at +/- 0, in the order that made sense to me, ear tested through three drafts that didn't quite work, and finally allowed to settle for a fortnight, before a final play to check and see if it holds up. I think it does.

The title is taken from a speech made by George W. Bush on September 6, 2004. It's so bizarre to think about those times now, in light of the carnage and stupidity and every other damned thing it involved (and involves). It was a time I found totally gutting, a gutting doubled by being utterly powerless to do anything. None of this context is audible – or is it? It's all in there somehow, I think. Well, I'm not sure, but as soon as I remove the mentions of Zarqawi, the mixtape feels incomplete. I'm willing to just let that one be. Hence that pic.

The Zarqawi context is immediately and undeniably apparent in your mixtape. As I hope my outrage at Nestlé's treatment of Ethiopia is in this spirograph I drew - http://img233.imageshack.us/img233/2402/86729479ik5.jpg

@ Pinker than thou & hknbrk: fair cop, mea culpa... ...but this is certainly not the first time someone has made a dubious link to Zarqawi, nor is it the most dubious link made. But of all the dubious links, it's the one with the least political effects. Yes, but, it is a bit of a lobster on a telephone...

@ millmeister: tracklist will be forthcoming in due course... it is a peverelist track, one of my faves of his.

@PC In fact if you just put in the picture without the explanation I'd find it easier to take. I don't think there's any harm in having a concept and of course mixes made with feeling and thought are rare and welcome. I just think it's best to allow listener to find whatever "hauntings" they may, whether they decode in a way you had in mind or not.

As a slight aside, but related I think, I love David Lynch's description about his struggle with interviews where he explains that it takes him years to convert words, phrases, ideas and concepts into the fully realized expression of a film. No sooner is that done, than he's asked to break it back down into the words, phrases and concepts.

Anyway, props on the Fatima Yamaha inclusion and looking forward to finding out what the track around 1:12 is.

really excited about this. bring on the politics in music ... not just clever track names but actual concepts, idea, that challenge. people are gona say 'hippie' but i dont care. lets try to wake some of the zombies...

The concept seems fair enough and the mix is more than fair. It's hard to explain how a certain idea inspires a work of art or a mixtape or what have you.

I'd like to imagine that the female voice around 19:00 is Zarkawi's inner monologue. I'm not being cheeky- I think there is common ground between the mind of terrorists and angsty teens. "I'm 15 years old and I feel it's already too late to live" is unfortunately not too far off from jihadist fatalism.

Anyway-Great mix. I'm surprised that you had the restraint not to put Blood on My Hands on the mix. Then again, maybe it's only Americans that conflate Iraq and 9/11. ha ha